n the Slavonic
frontier localities, thus rising with the growth of towns, trade and
manufactures, was still increased when it was found necessary to
import almost every element of mental culture from Germany; after the
German merchant and handicraftsman, the German clergyman, the German
school-master, the German _savant_ came to establish himself upon
Slavonic soil. And lastly, the iron thread of conquering armies, or
the cautious, well-premeditated grasp of diplomacy, not only followed,
but many times went ahead of the slow but sure advance of
denationalization by social development. Thus, great parts of Western
Prussia and Posen have been Germanized since the first partition of
Poland, by sales and grants of public domains to German colonists, by
encouragements given to German capitalists for the establishment of
manufactories, etc., in those neighborhoods, and very often, too, by
excessively despotic measures against the Polish inhabitants of the
country.

In this manner the last seventy years had entirely changed the line of
demarcation between the German and Polish nationalities. The
Revolution of 1848 calling forth at once the claim of all oppressed
nations to an independent existence, and to the right of settling
their own affairs for themselves, it was quite natural that the Poles
should at once demand the restoration of their country within the
frontiers of the old Polish Republic before 1772. It is true, this
frontier, even at that time, had become obsolete, if taken as the
delimitation of German and Polish nationality; it had become more so
every year since by the progress of Germanization; but then, the
Germans had proclaimed such an enthusiasm for the restoration of
Poland, that they must expect to be asked, as a first proof of the
reality of their sympathies to give up _their_ share of the plunder.
On the other hand, should whole tracts of land, inhabited chiefly by
Germans, should large towns, entirely German, be given up to a people
that as yet had never given any proofs of its capability of
progressing beyond a state of feudalism based upon agricultural
serfdom? The question was intricate enough. The only possible solution
was in a war with Russia. The question of delimitation between the
different revolutionized nations would have been made a secondary one
to that of first establishing a safe frontier against the common
enemy. The Poles, by receiving extended territories in the east, would
have becom